Sometimes, however carefully and accurately you describe something, you just can’t capture what it is that makes it great. Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a tall man with a beard who wore a black hat, but, factual as that description is, it somehow misses the point.
A few times recently, we’ve described the general characteristics of a beer and realised that they could apply to a thousand other brews. We’ve had to resort to words like ‘zing’ to get across an additional, elusive quality that makes that particular beer great.
Is it freshness? A quality of carbonation? Subtle flavours which more refined palates than ours could identify? We don’t know and, until such time as we do, ‘zing’ will have to do.